The basic discipline. Just arrive on location before sunrise, put your camera on the tripod and enjoy the spectacle. Repeat in the evening.

Water is a tricky element, permanently threatening to swallow if not you then at least your gear, especially if you are balancing on top of some slippery rocks, in complete darkness, in the middle of a winter gale on the shores of the Atlantic. But certainly worth it.

In outdoor photography, nothing compares to the combination of evening ambient light with the artificial lights of a city. Trouble is, towns come full of people and too many will join you behind the camera, offering a wide range of opinions and invariably asking you to take a photo of them, with their camera first and then with yours...

Photographing birds is a deeply frustrating experience and great fun at the same time. Trying it lets everyone appreciate the skill and patience of real bird photographers. Back home is, of course, the best place to start and backyard means Europe for the purposes of this website.

Moving further afield confirms the backyard experience and augments the frustration. As many birds live virtually everywhere, the overlap between "backyard" and "exotic" is significant and birds are put here into the one or other section simply depending on where they were photographed.

Not that birds would not be animals but photographing them is just a completely different discipline, from camera settings to methods how to find and approach the subject...

With the human face being such an amazing object, taking photos of people is a treat. The model cooperates, the lights are under control, just compare it to the random experience of photographing animals...

Lonely trees in open landscapes, structures of stones against flowing water oror statues against evening sky, all kind of elements can carry a photograph on their own. Nothing complicated in technical terms, just feel good images.

"The future belongs to photography. For on a photograph, any ape can be turned into a respectable citizen, even human being." Friedrich Nietzsche